


back to the beginning

by ailhsa_23



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 12:34:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7051705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ailhsa_23/pseuds/ailhsa_23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark, backstory (childhood, high school or college/med school) - dying inside. Pre-series. Prompt by citron_presse way back in 2011.</p>
            </blockquote>





	back to the beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [citron_presse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/citron_presse/gifts).



> I'm currently trying to put all of my fics in one place. If this looks vaguely familiar to you, you've probably read it on livejournal :)

You always had the quiet reputation of being something you're not.  
  
In pre-school, you were the loud kid with the tufts of brown hair who liked to think he ran the playground. Fast forward to a few years later; you were the one that protected the skinny blue-eyed boy with the retainer against the neighbour kids who liked to think he’d do well sitting in the bottom of a trash can. In high school, you were the jock who walked around with a blonde on your arm and your jacket hooked over your shoulder.  Everything bounced off of you, like that old saying about sticks and stones. But you've come to realise that it, like everything else, was a lie.  
  
No one knew what you went home to. The big, empty house, weighted down by years of unspoken words and dark looks. They didn't know that beneath the bravado was still the scared twelve year old boy who turned all the lights on at night just to give the illusion that for once, he wasn't alone.  
  
Your parents never quite understood why you did it. They would mutter their questions between themselves but ignore you. Once, you remember your mother coming to your room, the night of your thirteenth birthday, smelling like a bar. How she leaned over you on the bed and kissed your forehead. It was the only indication she'd ever given about how she felt. You remember it well because it made you cry. It was a side of you that never dared to show itself again after that. Even when Derek lost his father, you couldn't budge but inside, it almost killed you.  
  
Almost fifteen years had passed when your eyes threatened to reveal your darkest secret again. It was raining this time and you stood wedged between Derek and Addison, staring down into a six-foot hole as the coffin was lowered.  
  
Your relationship with your mother was somewhat strained over the years. There was the annual invitation for Thanksgiving Dinner since you left for college but it was just a formality. She knew you would go over to Derek's, the skinny blue-eyed boy who you protected against bullies and the one who helped you build a tree-fort in his backyard to sleep in.  
  
She called you back east in the final days and made you sit at her bedside. You couldn't believe this was the same woman who gave birth to you but you convinced yourself otherwise, she was just a shell. You listened to her talk about the days before you were born and as she went on about how she was a flower child, you couldn’t help but laugh to yourself. Why couldn’t she tell you this when you were a kid? Days when you knew you had to sit through the speeches, just because. But you indulged the old woman’s dying wish and stayed. It would’ve broken her heart had you left, if she even had one to break.  
  
‘I’m sorry I left you alone.’  
  
She whispered those words to you once she was sure that your father was out of ear-shot. She looked up at you out of familiar icy blue orbs which fell as you pulled away. You muttered your apologies and stumbled out of the room in search of a stiff drink and some fresh air. Your father found you on the porch of your childhood home a few hours later, nursing that same drink, to tell you that she was gone.  
  
  
You often wondered what might have been had you stayed with her in that room, to let the twenty-eight years of your life spent in bitterness be washed away in the space of three hours. Of course, people can’t always have what they want; life would be way too easy.


End file.
